Chocolate 101: A guide to picking the best

If you love baking cookies, you may already have a favorite brand or variety of chocolate chips. But when it comes to pastry and candy recipes that showcase chocolate, the options can seem endless — and endlessly confusing.

As Americans have grown more interested in how food gets to the kitchen, it has become common practice for chocolate labels to do more than just market and protect the product; labels also provide significantly more information about the chocolate inside. Let’s look at what information is on a chocolate label and what it really means.

Let’s start with the cacao percentage. The cacao bean has three components: chocolate liquor, a thick, brown paste; cocoa butter; and the cacao solids. The chocolate liquor is responsible for the chocolate flavor, including the bitter properties. Cocoa butter, a natural fat, is responsible for a chocolate’s smooth and creamy mouthfeel.

Most labels list the cacao percentage — the total amount of all those elements — as well as the percentage of that made up of cocoa butter.

Dark chocolate is a blend of cacao and sugar. So if the chocolate is 60 percent cacao, the other 40 percent is sugar. The higher the cacao percentage, the

less sweet the chocolate will be because it contains less sugar.

Milk chocolate combines the cacao with milk solids and sugar.

Tasting many different chocolates can give you a general idea of what cacao percentage you prefer, but there are enormous differences among different chocolates.

Some manufacturers include the geographic origin of the beans on their labels. It’s worth paying attention to as the terroir of a region has a big impact on the flavor of the bean — and the chocolate made from it.

Two chocolate bars with the same cacao percentage can taste vastly different because they’re

made with beans from different regions or because they have different ratios of cocoa butter to cacao solids. The upside to that is that you have a good excuse to eat a variety of chocolate: research.

For optimal results in most pastry and confection recipes, dark chocolate that is around 60 percent cacao and in the vicinity of 35 percent cocoa butter will work as a universal default. If it is a European chocolate, it will be called couverture; if it is American, it will be labeled bittersweet or semisweet chocolate.

Milk chocolate should be close to 35 percent cacao, and white chocolate should be close to 30

percent cocoa butter. Other chocolates will work, but there will be big differences in the intensity of chocolate, which is a matter of personal preference.

The form the chocolate is in when you buy it really only affects how you handle it. Often sold in the bulk departments of grocery stores or specialty shops, chocolate coins or pistoles are convenient, small pieces that do not require chopping for melting or for making ganache. Some baking bars or blocks are marked in increments of weight, which is convenient for measuring if you do not use a scale.

Though it may be convenient, don’t buy a bag of chocolate chips to use in candy or pastry recipes. Chocolate chips are usually very low in cocoa butter, which helps them hold their shape in cookies and baked goods. When melted, they are very thick and will adversely impact candies and pastries.

Finally, while you can find higher-quality chocolates at some grocery stores, professional-quality products can be found at baking and pastry supply stores, online at specialty shops or from the manufacturers.

Ben Fink / The Culinary Institute of America Before buying chocolate for Mint Meltaways or other treats, read the label.